The high-profile and government-funded e-commerce website Plasa.com recently announce their new look, as Shinta Witoyo (CEO) tweeted yesterday. Plasa rumored to receive another round of funding by their parent company, Telkom for further development of the marketplace site.

Plasa’s new design actually looks more cramped compared to the old version. More content seemed to got put on the frontpage, and I’m not a UI expert or anything, but i kinda feel less comfortable compared to the old design. But overall, Plasa added more content to the site including their partnership with GantiBaju (Indonesia’s Threadless) and other relevant content about shopping etc.

One other addition to the major update is now they support digital items as well rather than focusing only on physical items. Now you can download mobile games, wallpapers, themes, apps and even ticket for concerts, but I’m guessing this feature is not yet available for regular users.

Just like Tokopedia, Plasa doesn’t get a cut from transactions happening on their website. Instead, they prefer to make money from advertising spaces which now you can see here and there on the website. I’m not sure about their strategy to generate revenue from banner ads, but whatever it is i hope it can cover their expensive operational costs.

full disclosure : i work for a company founded by Plasa’s current CEO, Shinta Witoyo. But this post is as objective as possible.